Total Recall

CHAPTER 22 Betrayal

Now, as Quaid, he understood so much, yet still not enough. He knew there was danger, immense danger, but wasn’t sure of its nature. Had Cohaagen’s men captured him, there in the alien complex? If so, what had he told them? His mind had been opened to the No’ui, but not to his own life, which had been blotted out by the memory implant that had lopped off his past identity and made him Douglas Quaid.

Somehow he knew that he wouldn’t have told Cohaagen about the true nature of the alien complex. Cohaagen was the wrong person; he would be an abuser rather than a user. Maybe Cohaagen had subjected him to the memory implant in an effort to make him tell. Somehow the alien knowledge must have been proof against Cohaagen’s interrogation. But who was the right person to tell?

He saw an expanse of ice, now, at the bottom of the complex; he must have moved to another region. The ice was punctured by hundreds of round wells, like a giant pegboard. He looked up and saw that a column was suspended directly above the hole, like a peg—

A peg. A peg that could be lowered into the hole, where it would start a reaction, activating the system, starting a complex chain of events that would in due course…

Kuato had not been able to read much of the No’ui message; that had been for Quaid alone. Evidently the No’ui knew how to shield against telepaths too, even in a memory of a message received fifty thousand years after being recorded! So they must have been able to keep it from Cohaagen. But now Kuato caught on.

“A nuclear reactor!” he exclaimed. “To make an atmosphere!”

But Kuato’s attention remained on Quaid. “Think, Quaid! How does it work?”

Quaid returned to the memory. He soared up through space, needing no support because he was exploring a design that was now stored in his head, and could be explored by mere thoughts. It was the eidetic implant of the No’ui: the alien presence in his mind. He passed temporary scaffolding on the side of the abyss. He approached a ledge at the very top of the pit. There was a walkway leading to what he knew was a control room. He floated into it.

There were electronic consoles surrounded by enormously complex mechanical systems—the tops of the corroded columns. But the corrosion was nothing; the No’ui would have guarded against it had it mattered. The key elements of the machinery were protected. He passed a textured wall.

He knew how to start this device. The question was whether Kuato was the one to tell. There was something that made him doubt, not because Kuato was a bad person—that wasn’t the case—but because of a wrongness in the situation. Something didn’t jibe, and until he knew exactly what was wrong, he was stalling.

“There!” Kuato cried. “Go back… More… There.”

An abstract mandala, a concentric configuration of geometric shapes that might represent the cosmos, had been sculpted into the stone. It was covered with weird hieroglyphics that did not derive from Sumer or Egypt or any Earthly culture. It was a No’ui representation, and Quaid understood it now, but did not care to interpret it for anyone else. The wrongness was still there—not Kuato himself, but—

“Closer,” Kuato said eagerly. Evidently he could read the mandala, see the figures, but did not know their meaning.

In the center of the mandala was an image of startling familiarity: a human hand.

Kuato saw the hand, but didn’t get it. “How do you start the reactor?” he demanded. “Concentrate!”

Quaid focused on the hand, tracking toward it, as if drawn into it. Oh yes, he knew—

Suddenly the hand began to vibrate. A low-pitched rumbling filled the chamber. Quaid’s eyes snapped open and the rumbling continued. It wasn’t part of his vision!

Sand and gravel rained down from the ceiling. Hairline cracks spread through the walls and then expanded into wide fissures. A mining mole bored through the chamber wall and burst into the room. Quaid leaped from his chair and George followed suit, buttoning his shirt as he ran for the door. A rebel threw it open and they entered the chaos of the outer chamber.

Another mole had bored into the catacombs, churning through the mummified bodies. Fifty soldiers mowed down the outnumbered, outgunned rebels. The mole ground its way out through another niche-lined wall, heedless of the sacrilege. Soldiers followed the juggernaut farther into the chamber. Some rebels tried to fight, but they had been caught unprepared. This was no more than a mop-up operation for Cohaagen’s forces.

“Where’s Kuato?” said the rebel at the door. An explosion ripped through the room, throwing everyone to the floor. Quaid helped George to his feet and bent to lend a hand to the rebel fighter, but the man was dead.

Melina and Benny found their way to Quaid’s side. George’s bloody shirt had been torn open in his fall and they stared at Kuato’s wizened head in amazement. But there was no time for explanations.

“This way!” George shouted. He led them through a concealed door into a passageway. Soldiers tried to block their path, but Melina mowed them down. Benny and Quaid grabbed guns from the fallen soldiers and ran on through a series of chambers until they reached an airlock. Quaid guarded the rear as George, Melina, and Benny squeezed through the door. As he closed the door and flipped the lever to bolt it in place, he heard more gunfire—from within the airlock!

Quaid spun just in time to see Benny riddling George’s body with bullets. There had been a traitor in their midst. Kuato himself would have known it had he looked into Benny’s mind. But he had been watching Quaid and so had overlooked the obvious. Benny had used Quaid as a shield to get near Kuato.

Before Quaid could move, Benny seized Melina and pointed the gun at her head. “Freeze!” he shouted. Quaid froze and Benny sneered. “Congratulations, folks. You led us right to him.”

Quaid ignored the jibe and knelt to examine George’s still form, trying to find a last flicker of life. If Kuato could strike at Benny’s mind, set him back just long enough for Quaid to—

“Forget it, bro,” Benny said. “His fortune-telling days are over.”

Kuato’s head was dead weight. George’s head hung limp. The body seemed dead.

Melina glared at Benny, as astounded as she was outraged. “Benny, you’re a mutant!”

The man’s lips quirked. He displayed a flashing beacon hidden in his artificial hand. “It pays to keep in touch. Your boys never checked me. Hell, Kuato never caught on. He may have had weird powers, like the rumors say, but he wasn’t smart, and this organization wasn’t smart. You can bet nobody would’ve sneaked into Cohaagen’s den like this!”

Quaid had to agree. He had noted the laxity of the rebels himself. They had depended too much on Kuato’s mutant power, and let something obvious and stupid happen. They weren’t professionals.

But Benny was. His eyes glittered cruelly as he added: “Sorry, Mel. I got five kids to feed.”

Five? “What happened to number six?” Quaid asked.

Benny grinned. “Shit, man. I ain’t even married.” Then he was suddenly authoritarian. “Now put your fucking hands on your head!”

From alien majesty to human ignominy, so quickly! It seemed that the No’ui had been right to doubt the likelihood of man’s success. With men like Cohaagen in control, the alien gifts weren’t worth it.

As Quaid complied with his order, Benny pulled Melina with him while he edged over and kicked open the bolt on the airlock door. Quaid remained alert for any mistake on Benny’s part, but the man was alert, too. Only by sacrificing Melina could he have gotten the man—and Benny knew he wouldn’t do that. Benny had been standing right there when Quaid had acknowledged his love for her.

Then Quaid heard a muffled choking sound from Kuato’s head. He bent close to hear the barely audible whisper.

“Quaid…”

“Back off, Quaid!” Benny snapped.

Kuato struggled to speak again. “Start the reactor… Free Mars.” Quaid jumped back as a burst of gunfire obliterated the head. He heard a muffled exclamation from Melina. He looked up—and there was Richter standing above him, holding an automatic rifle.

“Make a move,” said Richter. “Please.”

Quaid’s eyes burned into the man with hatred. But he was helpless. Benny’s betrayal had wiped out both the Resistance and Quaid’s hope.

Quaid and Melina were roughly shackled and thrown into a mole for transport. “I’m sorry,” he told her, over the roar of the engine. “If it hadn’t been for me, Benny wouldn’t have gotten to Kuato.”

“I brought you in!” she said. “I thought—feared—”

“That I was the traitor,” he finished for her. “I know. I don’t remember much of what we were to each other before, but I think for me it was supposed to be business. When I fell into the pit, I realized that I loved you. That’s why that memory kept coming back to me. It was the last I had seen of you. I guess Cohaagen didn’t know about that, or thought the memory implant would wipe it out. It did wipe out all the other memories, but not the love.”

“I couldn’t forget you,” she said. “I didn’t know whether I could trust you, but somehow…”

“I guess we were destined for each other, corny as that sounds. But you know, there was more I found down there, before they—I guess they captured me. I don’t remember that, but I remember the alien message.”

“The what?”

“The No’ui. An alien trading species. They set this up for us, when we came of age. If we qualified. Which I guess we don’t. But—” He paused, remembering something else. “Do you know anything about hydrazoic acid?”

She concentrated, as they bumped along in the mole. “It’s a colorless, poisonous, highly explosive liquid. I sniffed some once. It was vile!”

“What would it be like on a planetary scale? I mean, thousands of tons of it?”

“Like hell, I think! Why?”

“The aliens—they were going to use it to make air. I mean, with water. They were going to melt the ice, and combine—I don’t know, I’m no chemist. Does it make sense?”

“I’m no chemist either, but I think it could make sense only to an alien!”

“But with advanced alien technology, would it be possible? I mean, to break apart hydrazoic acid and water, and recombine them into air, and use the extra for a nuclear reactor to power the whole thing?”

She shook her head. “I’d have to ask someone who knew more about it than I do! But it sounds crazy to me.”

He sighed. Maybe it was crazy. But it was also in his mind. He hoped the aliens did know what they were doing.

The mole ground on, carrying them to Cohaagen. Quaid did not expect to enjoy the encounter.